Since the dawn of civilization, mankind has sought to record its deeds, and the surrounding world by making pictoral representations of his observations. Early cave dwellers recorded noteworthy events, such as the passing of seasons, or great success in the hunt, by leaving paintings on the walls of the caves and other dwellings they occupied. Primitive paints were derived from pigments extracted from indigenous plants and animals. These paints were then applied, sometimes in extremely elegant fashion, to the walls of caves by crude brushes fabricated from weeds, tree limbs and bone fragments. Despite the inelegant nature of the paints and brushes, many of these pictoral histories remain, leaving us with a better insight into how ancient man lived.
As mankind progressed, the tools he used to record his surroundings became more sophisticated. The limited palate of pigments derived from nature grew greater as man experimented with other materials. Traditional materials, such as plant matter, were mixed with metal powders, various types of earth and minerals, and other organic materials to create a palate as vibrant and diverse as nature itself. Paints were no longer applied with weeds and sticks. Early brushes were created from the plumes or fur of various animals. These paints were no longer applied to simply cave walls. Mankind learned to fashion stone tablets upon which the paints were applied. Similarly, the bark of different plants, such as papyrus, were worked with different tools and elements to form early papers. Likewise mankind learned to use the skins and hides of animals as a canvas upon which pictures could be painted.
Mankind's knowledge of the arts continued to grow so that over time, paints came to be fashioned from all manner of synthetic materials. These materials yielded not only a rainbow of color, but also other desirable characteristics such as gloss, texture and opacity to name but a few. Both the brushes for applying paint and the medium upon which paint is applied benefited from the revolution in synthetic materials. Conventional synthetic materials are now routinely used to create both brush bristles and the “canvas” upon which pictures are painted.
Innovations in machinery have allowed man to apply paints to huge sheets of paper or canvas moved at ever increasing speeds through printing presses. The quality and uniformity of the printed image resulting from such a process is admirable, and far beyond what the early cave dweller could have ever imaged in his wildest dreams.
However, even a caveman would easily recognize the process that both the highest speed printing press, and the most avante garde artist uses: the application of a pigment to a medium to create a static pictoral representation. Indeed, while the tools for painting have improved and the artist's technique has advanced (arguably) the underlying concepts have remained essentially the same. For example, an artist wishing to paint the sun setting over a mountain can dutifully study her subject, and then produce a faithful representation of that image by applying paint via the brush, to canvas. However, once committed to canvas, that image was fixed for all time. This static image may have been a true representation of how the artist perceived the subject at the moment it was captured, but the painting itself has no capacity for change, so as to expand or evolve capturing the new reality of the image. Many well known artists have tried to deal with this by painting a “series” of images of a given subject, attempting to capture many different representative facets of the subject. Most artists found this technique lacking.
Modern filmmaking techniques allow an artist to capture on film the moving image of a given subject. While this artistic technique allows the representation of change in the subject, it is extremely limiting in terms of allowing an artist to accentuate nuances in the subject. Moreover, filmmaking techniques do not easily accommodate the abstract expression of images.
Accordingly, there exists a need for both a method and an apparatus that allows for representation of artistic images in static and dynamic fashion concurrently. Such a device should not in itself be so large or obtrusive that it in any way distracts from the artistic work.